Court Netherleigh: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

That a wave of trouble had swept over Lady Adela, leaving desolation and despair behind it, was all too visible. To be put away by her husband in the face and eyes of her own family and of the world, was to her proud spirit the very bitterest blow possible to be inflicted on it; a cruel mortification, that she would never quite lose the sting of as long as life lasted.

On the very day the separation was decided upon, not an hour after Mr. Grubb left her in her chamber after apprising her of it, Lord Acorn, as you have read, came to the house, and took her from it without ceremony. His usual débonnaire indifference had given place to a sternness, against which there could be no thought of rebellion.

She took up her abode at Chenevix House that day, and Darvy followed with the possessions that belonged to her. She was not kindly received, or warmly treated. No, she had given too serious offence for that. Her mother did not spare her in the matter of reproach; her father was calmly bitter; Grace was cold. Lady Sarah Hope ran away to the country to avoid her, taking her sister Frances and Alice Dalrymple; and Lady Sarah made no scruple of letting it be known at her father's why she had gone.

Lord and Lady Acorn might have their personal failings, the one be too lavish of money, the other of temper, but they had at least brought up their daughters to be good and honourable women, instilling into them strict principles; and the blow was a sharp one. They deemed it right and just not to spare her who had inflicted it—inflicted it in wanton wilfulness—and they let her pain come home to her. It all told upon Adela.

The world turned upon her a cold shoulder. Rumours of the separation between Mr. and Lady Adela Grubb soon grew into certainty; and the world wanted to know the cause of it. For, after all, the true and immediate cause, that terrible crime she had allowed herself to commit, never transpired. The very few cognizant of it buried the secret within their own bosoms for her good name's sake. No clue transpiring as to this, people fell back upon the other and only cause known, more or less, to them—her long-maintained cavalier treatment of her husband. Mr. Grubb must have come to his senses at last, reasoned society, and sent her home to her mother to be taught better manners. And society considered that he had done righteously.

So the world, taking up other people's business according to custom, turned its back upon her. Which was, to say the least of it, inconsistent. For now, had the Lady Adela been suspected of any grave social crime; one, let us say, involving fears of having to appear before the Judge of the Divorce Court, society would have shaken hands with her as usual, so long as public proceedings remained in abeyance: what every one may privately see or suspect goes for nothing. This other offence was lighter, it did not involve those fatal extremes; this was more as though she were being punished as a naughty child; consequently the world thought fit to let its opinion be known, and to deal out a meed of censure on its own immaculate score.

But it told, I say, on Lady Adela. Told cruelly. Cast off by her husband for good and aye; tacitly reproached daily and hourly by her parents; rejected by her sisters, as though she might tarnish them if brought into too close contact, and looked askance at by society; Lady Adela drank the cup of repentance to the dregs.

If she could, if she could only undo her work—if that one fatal morning, when she found the cheque-book lying on the floor of her husband's dressing-room, had never been numbered in the calendar of the past! She was for ever wishing this fruitless wish. For ever wishing that her treatment of her husband had been different in the time before that one temptation set in.

No more invitations came for her from the gay world. Not that she would have accepted them. For the short time the Chenevix family remained in town after the outbreak, cards would come in, bidding Lord and Lady Acorn and their daughter Grace to this entertainment or to that; but never a one came for Lady Adela Grubb. She might have passed out of existence for all the notice taken of her. Mr. Grubb had suggested to her father that she should have her own carriage. She did not set one up; she would have had no use for it, had it been set up for her.

They went to their seat in Oxfordshire, carrying her with them. Lord Acorn returned to town in a day or two: Grace went on to Colonel Hope's place near Cheltenham, to stay with her sisters, Sarah and Frances. This left Adela and Lady Acorn alone; and her ladyship very nearly drove the girl wild with her tartness. She would have driven her quite wild had Adela's spirit been what it once was; but it was altogether subdued.